Stylogeny combining Corporate Memphis × Illustrated Rom-Com Book Cover

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Style combination · Contrasts

Corporate Memphis × Illustrated Rom-Com Book Cover

Both draw flat people on bright grounds in the late 2010s, but Corporate Memphis stretches anonymous, rubber-limbed figures to sell a platform and leaves the words to a neutral sans; the rom-com cover draws two particular characters in one situation and makes the hand-lettered title the largest element.

From the research on Illustrated Rom-Com Book Cover (Cartoon Couple Cover)

Mix them and make something Corporate Memphis Illustrated Rom-Com Book Cover

YAY!Corporate Memphis × Illustrated Rom-Com
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Corporate Memphis, their arrangement from Illustrated Rom-Com Book Cover, the finish from Illustrated Rom-Com Book Cover. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

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What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Corporate Memphis Illustrated Rom-Com Book Cover (Cartoon Couple Cover)

Type from Illustrated Rom-Com Book Cover
Colour from Corporate Memphis
Form from Corporate Memphis
Composition from Illustrated Rom-Com Book Cover
Surface from Illustrated Rom-Com Book Cover

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The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Illustrated Rom-Com Book Cover

Yay!

Londrina Solid, standing in for Tall, condensed hand-drawn capitals in white, stacked in two to four lines down the cover: medium-weight on Beach Read (2020), People We Meet on Vacation (2021) and Book Lovers (2022), thin and monoline on Twice in a Blue Moon (2019) and It Happened One Summer (2021); the 'big block text' The Pudding found on the style

Text · Corporate Memphis

The flat vector illustration style that became the default visual voice of big tech in the late 2010s: faceless, ethnically non-specific figures with elongated limbs and tiny heads, drawn in bright flat colour among blobs, leaves and confetti. Codified in Buck's Alegria system for Facebook (2017) and spread by open libraries such as unDraw and Humaaans, it was later named, half-mockingly, after the Memphis Group.

Hanken Grotesk; Corporate Memphis used Circular and Airbnb Cereal

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The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Corporate Memphis, with a counter-accent from Illustrated Rom-Com Book Cover. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Corporate Memphis Illustrated Rom-Com Book Cover (Cartoon Couple Cover)

  • #ffffff ground · 36%
  • #2f2e41 ink · 14%
  • #ffc857 accent · 18%
  • #fdc104 accent · 14%
  • #6c63ff accent · 10%
  • #ef3e84 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #ffffff;
  --ink: #2f2e41;
  --accent-1: #ffc857;
  --accent-2: #fdc104;
  --accent-3: #6c63ff;
  --accent-4: #ef3e84;
  --font-display: "Londrina Solid", cursive;
  --font-text: "Hanken Grotesk", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Illustrated Rom-Com Book Cover (Cartoon Couple Cover): Draw the characters as the book describes them, in skin tone, body size, age, disability and gender, and do not lighten or slim them for the market: illustration spread partly because stock photography offered too few people of colour, and Helen Hoang chose it to get past readers' bias about her Asian lead. Because a cute cartoon cover does not show how explicit a book is and can be mistaken for young-adult fiction, say clearly on the book and in its retail listing that it is an adult romance. Critics have read the uniform look as sexist, making women's adult reading look like YA (Kelly Jensen, Book Riot, 2019), so draw this book's own premise rather than the template.

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The two styles

A brightly coloured illustration shows a person with a dark ponytail striding with one knee raised and arms spread, wearing a yellow shirt, purple trousers and teal shoes. The words “Move Brighter” appear above them on a white background scattered with colourful dots and curved marks. 2017–present · North America, Global / networked Corporate Memphis The flat vector illustration style that became the default visual voice of big tech in the late 2010s: faceless, ethnically non-specific figures with elongated limbs and tiny heads, drawn in bright flat colour among blobs, leaves and confetti. Codified in Buck's Alegria system for Facebook (2017) and spread by open libraries such as unDraw and Humaaans, it was later named, half-mockingly, after the Memphis Group. A cartoon woman holding colorful books and a man in a navy suit with a yellow tie glance at each other against a turquoise background. Huge white and pink lettering reads “PLOT TWIST,” with yellow accent strokes above and below. 2016–present · North America, Western Europe, Global / networked Illustrated Rom-Com Book Cover (Cartoon Couple Cover) The illustrated cover of the contemporary romantic comedy: a couple drawn as flat cartoon figures with simplified faces, from silhouettes and hidden faces to a few cartoon features, caught in one gesture that states the premise, on a single saturated ground of teal, pink, yellow or purple, under a hand-lettered title so large that the figures often lean on it. It recalls the drawn covers of 2000s chick lit. William Morrow's The Hating Game (2016) was an early example and Berkley took it up wholesale in 2018; by 2023, 72% of the romances featured in Publishers Weekly had illustrated covers.

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